Palworld is a dead game. Palworld has a new update. The community is enjoying new content with promises of much more. The Palworld developers don’t know what they’re doing. The Palworld developers are doing better than could be expected. Palworld is, at time of writing, the 50th most actively-played game on Steam. Palworld is outselling the latest Pokemon release. Palworld was a fad that has faded. Palworld is the best new survival game I’ve played this year.

All of these things are true. How can they all be true? I’d like to take a moment and explore this phenomenon, the game whose very popularity contradicts itself.

An Island Adventure

Gazing over the serene terrain of the island, leaving a trail of pony farts as we fly

For the uninitiated, Palworld is a base-building, monster-hunting, animal-befriending, open-world adventure game from the Japanese studio, Pocketpair. While it is the game that put Pocketpair on everyone’s radar, it’s far from their first successful title. They have several smaller titles under their belt, such as Craftopia, a similar entry to the open-world builder genre.

What sets Palworld apart from other popular games like Ark or Rust are the titular Pals - heavily stylized animal-like creatures that can be captured, tamed, and used for both combat and labor. Progression in the game consists of building a base and capturing pals to handle menial tasks for you like processing ores into metals, gathering lumber for construction, and defending your base from hostile Pals and other humans, be they player or hostile NPC. Unlike Ark’s dinosaurs, Pal’s cartoon aesthetic and creative design gives them a depth of personality and charm beyond what a more realistic game could offer, with the obvious comparison being to Pokemon’s roster of adorable, collectable monsters.

Data and chart courtesy of SteamDB.info - https://steamdb.info/app/1623730/charts/

Okay, we’ve established the basics of what the game is. Now, let’s take a minute and be completely honest with each other: You didn’t need me to explain that. Palworld has sold 20 million copies on Steam, not to mention those who have played it through Xbox Game Pass or purchased for console. There are hints of an upcoming Playstation release as well, slowly expanding the availability to even more players. Not long after release, Palworld hit 2.1 million concurrent players on Steam, putting it at the 2nd most played game of all time, only recently bumped down to 3rd with the release of Black Myth: Wukong.

If you’re on the internet reading about games, this is unlikely to be the first time you’ve seen or heard about Palworld. On the off chance that this is your first time hearing about it: It’s a lot of fun, and well worth checking out, but as an Early Access title it has a number of bugs that may or may not impact your experience. If the occasional crash or clipping into the void under the world is going to be an issue for you, maybe wait a year or so for them to iron out the wrinkles. Otherwise, I can heartily recommend it.

This is probably fine, right? This is fine. Normal bird behavior.

Don’t forget: You’re here forever

“But Timbr,” I have decided you are asking me, “If it’s so successful, why do all the forums and news articles say that it’s dead?” Palworld’s active player base has dropped to a small fraction of what it once was. These days, it hovers around a measly 30k Steam players, less than 2% of what it was at its peak. Of course, referring to that as a “measly 2%” ignores the fact that those numbers still put it among the most played games on a daily basis. The dialogue around Palworld’s “death” stems from two main factors: this 98% drop, and the other games that Palworld is in direct competition with.

The crafty-shooty-buildy genre, as I will call it because “open world multiplayer survival crafting shooter sandbox” is far too long, has a few major standouts. Some of the foremost among crafty-shooty-buildies are Rust, Ark: Survival Evolved, and Conan: Exiles. Something that all three of these games have in common is: they all want to be your Forever Games.

I have been building this fortress forever and it still looks terrible, because I am bad at building.

“What exactly is a forever game?”, you ask as well, because you’re very inquisitive and I really like that about you. In the ever-growing sea of games that our modern technology can deliver to our homes at the push of a button, many game developers strive to make a game that will be The Game - the one, singular game that you come back to time and again, something that you will never stray too far away from. These games rely on a constant cycle to hold on to players month after month, things like regular server wipes that keep things competitive, regular content updates with time limited seasonal events, and a revolving battlepass. The goal is to draw players in with the shining allure of something new, and keep that shine for as long as possible.

Check the reviews for these titles and you’ll see comments about it being “Pretty good” from players that have 2000+ hours of playtime. They keep it fresh, they keep it rolling, they want you here forever. Sure, Rust has never had 2 million players on at once, but it’s managed to maintain a constant playerbase of 100k+ for years at a time because, for those players, it is their Forever Game.

Official Palworld promotional material, celebrating 25 million downloads in the first month of release.

All of this is leading to one more, critical question. “Is Palworld a forever game?”, you ask, because you’re very astute and you’ve been doing a great job of following my rhetorical direction. The main issue with the discourse around Palworld is: It isn’t a forever game, but a lot of people expect that it’s supposed to be. Modern gaming is a sea of Forever-hooks, so it’s hard to find a new multiplayer game that doesn’t have a battlepass, and even the single-player games try to retain players with a pre planned release cycle for updates and cosmetics. Developers, or perhaps more accurately publishers, are desperate to make sure their game is always grabbing your attention. Top games from years ago are always on the news feeds, always a new update, always new fodder to remind you that their game exists. There’s an entire ecosystem built around these, endlessly reporting on these same titles. Go to any major gaming news outlet and you’re bound to find dozens if not hundreds of articles, videos, and uhh blog posts too, all covering the same thing.

Palworld doesn’t have any of that. What it does have is an expansive world full of cute, collectible monsters, randomly generated dungeons, engaging bosses, and a bunch of guns. Palworld doesn’t want you to live in the Palpagos Islands forever. Instead, it invites you to take a few days, maybe a few weeks, to enjoy yourself in a castle of your own creation. Have a seat at the bar, fry up a pal egg omelet, gun down your local eco-terrorist cell, or any other activity that you find enjoyable. Palworld really is a great place to relax and enjoy at your own pace. I’ve spent over a hundred hours breeding pals with “perfect” combat abilities, because that’s my idea of fun, while my teammates spent as much time optimizing automation facilities and collecting one of everything they see, because that’s their idea of fun too. Palworld has sensationalized marketing, playing up the guns, butchery, and forced labor, but underneath it all is possibly one of the coziest survival games I’ve ever played.

At the end of the day, it's just a nice place to build a home.

If you want a game you can play forever, there’s plenty of those out there. Instead, if you’d like a nice vacation to the beach, where you can adventure without the fear of missing out, then go grab your pal spheres. We’ve got wildlife to catch. If you’re looking for a fun diversion too, you can rent your own private Palworld server and start the adventure today, starting at $20 a month: https://www.akliz.net/games/palworld